


you will always be my favorite form of loving

by limerence (lavenderGreen)



Series: will the song never end? [2]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Clay | Dream is an idiot: the thrilling sequel, Domestic Bliss, Established Relationship, Florida AU i guess, Florida Man Loves Cats And His Boyfriend, Fluff, M/M, call me the cia because i do be engineering conflicts, i say fluff but there is a flimsy little argument, it's the cat dads fic, metaphors i came up with while sleep deprived and anxious, non-youtuber au, they're dating now karen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:55:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29085711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderGreen/pseuds/limerence
Summary: Before long, there’s a scuffling sound from under the dumpster and a little gray head pokes out, looking around before a tiny cat slinks out and makes its way to the food.Hesitantly, Clay holds out one hand palm up, and waits for the cat to acknowledge his presence. It finishes eating, then pads over to him, sniffing his fingers. After a moment, Clay scritches its chin, and the cat purrs.“Hi,” he says reverently.
Relationships: Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF)
Series: will the song never end? [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2133945
Comments: 55
Kudos: 322





	you will always be my favorite form of loving

**Author's Note:**

> **this is the follow-up to another fic!!** go read the first one in this series (awkward hearts (beating faster and faster)) if you want the full context, but this also works pretty well as a standalone, if you're just looking for fluff. thought i'd clarify, after seeing a fair amount of confusion over this. 
> 
> fic title from [cloud 9](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3vTWUeS80Y) by beach bunny (thank u hari). 
> 
> sorry this took so long lol. i'm still not super sure about it, but i've been having a weird/bad time lately so i figured i would mine some dopamine through the validation of strangers on the internet <3 
> 
> as always, a disclaimer: i do not know these people irl, i do not claim to know them. if any of them express discomfort with having fanfiction written about them, i will remove this asap. please do not send this to any of the ccs mentioned here. 
> 
> if you want to share this around anywhere, please let me know on [my tumblr](https://limerencewastaken.tumblr.com)!! alternatively, if you want to come chat there that's also an a+ idea.
> 
> ok enjoy <333

_Now_

“George, come on—” 

George cuts Clay off by brushing past him and taking the bag of dry cat food out of the cupboard. “So you just expected me to be fine with it? You could’ve told me first.” 

“I don’t know why I didn’t! I swear, I’ll take care of everything. You don’t have to lift a finger.”

“That’s literally not the point, Clay. This isn’t even the first time you’ve done this! I just—you know this can’t keep happening, right?” 

_A week ago_

Clay wakes suddenly, to a sharp, gnawing pain at his feet. He groans and opens his eyes to see his sweet cat attacking his toes with an unmatched fury. 

“God, Patches, you freak,” he says, coaxing himself away from George. He sits up and scoops Patches into his arms. She meows and goes easily, claws unsticking from their bedsheets. 

“Don’t kink-shame our cat, she can’t help it,” George says, voice still rough with sleep. He rolls over onto his back and stretches languidly. He’s wearing one of Clay’s hoodies, a threadbare gray thing from community college that George has since co-opted as his sleepwear. 

Oh well. It always did look nicer on him. For Clay, who gets to stare at his boyfriend all day, it’s a win-win scenario. 

George blinks lazily and glances at Clay, who smiles at him, holding on tight to the increasingly frustrated cat in his grip. “Morning.” 

He sets Patches down and she paces over the shared blanket with zero regard for their bodies before settling on the other side of George’s pillow. 

“Good morning to you too,” George says, then yawns hard enough for his jaw to click. Clay shifts around to get out of bed. “Wait, no, come back. What time is it?” 

Clay checks his phone. “Seven-fifteen.” 

“Where the hell are you going, then? I thought you only needed to be at work by nine.” 

Shit. Clay pauses. He hadn’t counted on George being coherent enough to understand how time works this early in the morning. “I have to go in a little earlier today. I have a meeting to prep for.” Well, he isn’t _technically_ lying. 

“This is bullshit,” George says with a righteous passion. Clay laughs as he lets himself be tugged over onto the bed again. “You should just quit your job, and then we’ll sue them for—for labor violations, or something.” 

“Okay. Patches can be our attorney,” Clay suggests, playing with George’s fingers. 

“Mm,” George says. “Her rates are pretty high, though. I don’t know if we can afford her.” 

Clay sighs. “I guess I’ll just have to go to work, then.” He leans down, fully tangling their hands together. George meets him halfway when they kiss. 

“If you must.” He squeezes Clay’s hand and watches him go from the bed. 

Once, in high school, when he and his family were moving house, Clay had been tasked with bringing the antique dishes up to the new display cabinet upstairs. Because he was sixteen, and did not possess amazing impulse control, his sister had goaded him into racing up the stairs with the full, precariously balanced stack of vintage glassware. One wrong move and all of it slipped, shattering half a story below into the living room. 

Clay learned two things in the following days. The first is that his dad’s face can and will go purple if he shouts for too long. The second thing he learns, to his infinite chagrin and irritation, is that when glass shatters, it goes _everywhere_. He scrubs out shards stuck in the kitchen wallpaper, embedded into furniture as far as the dining room. 

What Clay is trying to say is that George has shattered into his life in much the same way. There are traces of him everywhere in Clay’s existence, stuck deep in his bones, so far down that he’s barely aware of it, at times. 

Hell, in that moment, the first thought he’d had after the sharp sinking horror was _George is going to find this so funny_. 

He had been looking at George, backlit by the Denny’s behind them during freshman year, when his stomach swooped and he realized, _so this is what it’s supposed to feel like_. George had accompanied him to his grandma’s funeral without him asking, like he knew exactly what Clay needed in that moment. When he’d heard the news about the house, it was George that he called first, George who had read the directions out to him from the passenger seat, George who picked distastefully at the crumbling drywall (and made several cogent points about the weirder architectural choices) but then agreed to live here with Clay without a second thought. 

Before they’d cleared things up, in those last few unsure moments, Clay dreaded the thought of having to pick through the wreckage, because there are bits and pieces of George scattered all over his life, too small and seemingly unnoticeable for anybody to notice until weeks or years after the fact. 

Now, though, Clay thinks as he drives away from their neighborhood, he wouldn’t have it any other way. 

Clay pulls into his office parking lot with 45 minutes to spare. This early, there are only a few other cars in the space, but Clay makes a beeline straight for the dumpsters on the far side. He hasn’t quite worked in his current position for long enough that he feels comfortable letting other people catch him doing this, so for now he’ll just hide behind the Subaru. 

From his briefcase, he pulls out the packet of cat treats he’d pocketed on his way out of the house and lays a few right outside the gap underneath the recyclables bin. It’s just a waiting game from there—Clay sits down on the curb in his dress pants, tries not to think about what else might be in this exact spot. 

Before long, there’s a scuffling sound from under the dumpster and a little gray head pokes out, looking around before a tiny cat slinks out and makes its way to the food. Its back is still covered in kitten fluff, dark mottling against pale fur. 

Clay’s seen it hanging around outside the office a few times before, but this is the first time that he’s remembered to bring something for it. Hesitantly, he holds out one hand palm up, and waits for the cat to acknowledge his presence. It finishes eating, then pads over to him, sniffing his fingers. After a moment, Clay scritches its chin, and the cat purrs. 

“Hi,” he says reverently. 

He strokes down the cat’s spine and feeds it another treat, this time out of his hand. It looks remarkably well-kept for a stray, although it still has the same timid demeanor that he remembers about the cats that used to hang around outside his and George’s old apartment building. Only when it becomes clear to the cat that Clay’s just a giant food machine, it winds itself between his ankles. Clay is in love. 

The cat looks up at him silently. “You don’t say much, do you?” 

Patches had been the same way when he first found her, he remembers. Nervous and hidey and mostly-silent. It’s strange to think about now, when she’s so chatty and demanding. 

They stay like that for some time. Clay messes up when he tries to pick the cat up, at which point it hisses and leaves a nasty scratch on his hand, before jumping away. Clay swears and shakes his hand out. When he looks up, the cat has disappeared. 

“Aw,” George says, inspecting his hand under the heat lamps in the produce section. “What happened here?” 

“Patches was mad at me last night,” Clay says. Again, not technically a lie. She’d smelled the other cat on him the moment he stepped in the house and spent the whole night eyeing him woundedly from George’s arms. Clay stands by the fact that Patches knows exactly what she’s doing when she purposefully monopolizes George’s attention like that, the little schemer. 

“You guys have such a complicated relationship.” George drops his hand, which Clay doesn’t like, but then he worms his arm through Clay’s so that they’re walking pressed up next to each other. It’s nice. 

George had always been pretty reserved about physical contact, back when they were friends. He happily tolerated Clay draping himself over him after a long day, or using him as a footrest, but it was rare that he ever sought it out for himself. It was always something Clay admired about George, yet found incredibly frustrating: how easily he took Clay’s friendship as a given. 

Now, though, he’s the one pulling Clay along by the hand, or tracing nonsense words into his spine. It’s George who links their arms together in Trader Joe’s, or, like just earlier, who gives Clay a kiss on the cheek for something as small as splitting off to get those dark chocolate peanut butter cups he likes so much. 

“She’s just jealous that I get all your attention,” Clay teases, then laughs when George turns pink. 

“Don’t get cocky.” George nudges him away but doesn’t let go, so Clay comes reeling back. 

The touching—it’s another one of these new things about George that Clay is just now getting used to. 

_Thank god he makes it as easy as breathing_ , he thinks as he revels in the comforting pressure of George’s body against his. 

It’s the same process the next day, and the next. Clay comes to work early, parks next to the dumpsters, and sits with the cat until he accidentally pisses it off or it gets bored of him. Eventually, after a few more days, it finally lets him pick it up, at which point Clay discovers it’s a tomcat. It’s so _young_ too, thin and lanky and slightly fuzzy around the edges. It’s so young and it’s always alone, and maybe it reminds Clay a little bit of a certain someone at eighteen, standing unsurely in the middle of Jacksonville International. 

“Do you think Patches is lonely?” He asks a few nights later as he squirts toothpaste onto his and then George’s toothbrushes. From the bedroom, George laughs. 

“Why? She seems perfectly fine with walking all over my tablet in the middle of work.” 

“I don’t know,” Clay says. “I feel like cats need a companion, right? Otherwise they’ll die of loneliness.” 

“I think you’re thinking of hamsters, or something,” George says, and kindly does not make fun of him. “Besides, I don’t know if we could deal with that. Think of how much damage Patches could do if she had, like, an accomplice.” 

“Hm,” Clay says, and starts brushing his teeth. 

Okay, so maybe they can’t _keep_ the cat. But surely he can find some way to take care of it, right? Temporarily. He’s practically obligated to rescue him, now that they’re tight. Clay relays this to the cat one bright Thursday morning as it paws at his knee. He looks up in that sweet curious way of his, tilting his shovel-shaped head to one side like he’s really listening. Clay takes that as an agreement, and starts planning. 

“Do you know where the cat carrier is?” Clay asks two nights later, as George is cleaning the dishes. 

George doesn’t say anything for long enough that Clay thinks he might not have heard him, but then he says, “Um, I think we left it upstairs? Or it’s in the cupboard where we keep her treats.” 

“Right,” Clay says. His mind’s only halfway there—most of him is thinking through everything he’s got to do for it. As he ducks around the sink, George glances past at him, eyes narrowed suspiciously. 

Clay pulls into their parking spot Tuesday evening with a disgruntled cat in the carrier strapped into the passenger seat. He takes the key out of the ignition and undoes the seatbelt. Inside, the cat stares at him balefully from inside his face cone. 

“Sorry, bud,” Clay says regretfully, pressing a finger to the netting for him to take his anger out on for a moment. 

The shelter hadn’t had any openings available. It puts him in an unfortunate and less-than-ideal position, because now he’s got to find some way to keep the cat inside the house for a little bit. He looks at the cat, and the cat looks at him. 

“Please be polite,” Clay says. He picks up the cat carrier and steps out of the car. 

Okay—in hindsight, he probably should’ve told George first. That would’ve been such a good idea. If he hadn’t been so fixated on this one thing, then he totally would have.

As of now, though, Clay is in the middle of taking his shoes off at the threshold when George pops out of nowhere to say, “I _knew_ it!” 

Clay startles and so does the cat, swiveling his head around in that dumb little cone. George is standing a few feet away, frowning with his arms crossed. He’s dressed nicer than usual today, Clay remembers something about a video conference being mentioned the night before.

“Hey, babe,” Clay says nervously. “You look really good.” 

“What,” George points to the cat carrier accusingly, “is that?” 

“A cat?” Clay kicks off his other shoe and proffers the cat carrier to George. 

“Not _our_ cat! Were you planning to tell me we had another cat?” 

“I mean, eventually—” 

“Eventually!” George throws his arms up and takes the carrier into the kitchen with him, setting it on the dining table. Clay scrambles to follow along. 

“George, come on—” 

He cuts Clay off by brushing past him and taking the bag of dry cat food out of the cupboard. “So I was just supposed to be fine with? You could’ve told me first.” 

“I don’t know why I didn’t!” Clay says in a rush. He takes George’s hands in his own. “Really, I don’t. I just—I forgot, or something, you know how I am.” 

George’s eyes soften. “Yeah. You’re so dumb.”

“I am,” Clay agrees easily. Usually he’d belabor the point, but—not the time. “And anyway, we just need to keep him for a few weeks. Just until the shelter has an opening. I swear, I’ll take care of everything. You don’t have to lift a finger.”

George sighs, and although there’s no anger in it Clay can’t help but feel guilty. “This isn’t even the first time you’ve done this! I just—you know this can’t keep happening, right? We can’t keep adopting more cats.” 

“You’re right,” Clay says. George lets go of his hands and unzips the carrier. After a moment of consideration, the cat toddles out, slightly unbalanced, and starts pacing around the perimeter of the table. While George pets him tentatively, Clay shakes out some dry food into Patches’ old feeding tray and sets it in front of the cat. It looks at the food, then back up at Clay reproachfully.

“No more treats, bud,” Clay informs him. George watches them curiously.

“What is it about you and cats?” He says as he leans his head on Clay’s shoulder. Clay shrugs. 

“I’ve always liked them, and they’ve always liked me. Remember our apartment downtown? I used to feed the strays on the roof there.” 

“The roof that we weren’t allowed to be on?”

Clay pauses. “Yes.” 

George laughs, then goes to sit on one side of the table—this stained-glass affair that they’d impulse-bought way back when they moved in. The cat eyes him with trepidation and consents to be scratched around the edge of the cone.

“I’m sorry, though,” Clay says, draping his arms over George’s shoulders from behind him, resting his cheek on the top of his head. “I should’ve remembered to tell you, instead of sneaking around. You know I’d never intentionally try to keep anything from you, right?” 

“Of course you wouldn’t.” George says it like it’s a given and Clay’s heart swells with love. _As easy as breathing._ “I don’t know. Maybe it’s good for Patches to have a roommate. You’ve been spoiling her too much lately.” 

“Lies and slander. I treat her exactly how she deserves.” 

In that moment, a soft little meeping sound comes from behind them and Clay turns around to see Patches herself hiding behind a wall, staring wide-eyed and nervous at the intruder on the dining table. 

“Look at what you’ve done,” George says reproachfully. He unfolds himself from Clay and goes to pick her up. “You’ve given her anxiety now.” 

Patches twists around and scrambles up George until she’s squeezed up against him, ears pricked and alert as they move closer to the dining table. Clay coos and scritches her cheek. 

“You’re just as bad,” George scolds. “What have you got to be afraid of? You’re twice his size.” 

“She’s just shy.” Clay sets the new cat down on the ground gently and George does the same with Patches, who circles around warily but doesn’t run for it, which is a good sign. The other cat stands still, head tilted, before he steps closer with his head stretched out. 

“Does he have a name?” George asks. 

“Um. The shelter suggested Pepper? I think it’s cute.” 

“Pepper and Patches,” George says, a little under his breath. “That’s nice.” 

Clay wheezes. “Wait, why? We aren’t actually keeping him.” 

“I’m just _checking_ ,” George protests, but he’s smiling. “Whatever. You clean the table. I’m gonna start dinner.” The cats settle into each other’s presence, then eventually Patches loses interest and goes back to roaming around the living room. 

“Hey,” Clay says, nudging George where he’s stir-frying vegetables. “I really am sorry. It was stupid of me not to tell you, and it won’t happen again.” 

George sniffs and pushes the food around in the pan. “Damn right, it won’t,” he says haughtily.

“No more keeping things from you. And no more cats.” Clay scrubs at the bottom of their skillet. When did they become the kind of people to own a skillet? And when had it become _their_ skillet? “In my defense, it’s not like I go around adopting every cat I see. Two cats out of….what? Hundreds? That’s a tiny percentage.”

He loses his train of thought washing the dishes, thinking about how he might go about counting every cat he’s ever encountered in his lifetime, when George says, “What’s so special about Pepper, then? Apart from the obvious.” 

“Well,” Clay starts, then laughs sheepishly. “He just reminded me of somebody.”

George tilts his head questioningly to what Clay swears is the _exact_ same angle. “Wait, who?” Clay doesn’t say anything, only grins wider, shrugging. George makes a vomiting noise. “Oh, you’re kidding.” 

Clay bursts into laughter. He takes off the dish gloves and walks over to the stove, smacking a kiss on George’s cheek obnoxiously. He says, “You’re cute.” 

George scoffs, but he leans his weight back against Clay. 

There are pieces of George in his life, scattered far enough that Clay still isn’t quite sure where they’ve ended up. But he sees the results of it sometimes (all the time) when he wakes up with his nose in George’s hair, or when he automatically opens their text messages if something funny happens at work, or in the gold-framed picture of them in Jacksonville International watching benevolently over the living room. 

And, as he watches George scroll through articles on pet socialization while sitting with Pepper in his lap, he thinks that this closeness might just go both ways.

**Author's Note:**

> ok WAIT tw emotions i'm about to let myself be perceived: 
> 
> when i posted the second chapter to awkward hearts, it only had a few hundred reads. i thought, and was totally content with the possibility that, i'd probably cap out at about 1k reads and a few nice comments. i know that i'm not doing HUGE numbers, but it's still insane to me that i've gotten this kind of feedback... i've never gotten this sort of response to anything i've written before. so to the friends i've made, and the people who keep reccing my fic, and most importantly to you, dear reader! thank you so so much for enjoying my brainrot :'). 
> 
> other notes:  
> \- i love patches and i love george's new cat they are so 🥺  
> \- IM SORRY IF I HAVENT REPLIED TO YOUR COMMENT YET. i swear i'm making my way through them i just keep forgettingggg. each and every one of them put a smile on my face and please please don't feel like i'm ignoring you  
> \- idk if I'll keep writing add-ons to this? if there's something that you'd like to see, lmk :3
> 
> as always, come bother me at [tumblr](https://limerencewastaken.tumblr.com) :D. 
> 
> leave a nice comment to boost production on my brain chemical mining rig!!


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